Eprognosis is barely a week old, and we've already had over 500,000 pageviews (150,000 unique visitors). For perspective, GeriPal is about 3 years old, and in that time we've had 400,000 pageviews. We've had loads of press, including 6 stories in the New York Times about prognosis and eprognosis (Stories by Paula Span here, here, here, here, and here. Story by Pauline Chen in today's paper here. For a more complete list of media stories, see the eprognosis "About" page here. Unexpectedly, about a quarter of our hits have come from Turkey, due to this news story.)...................

Something happened along the way. Eprognosis was designed for clinicians, and yet before we launched, we decided to allow the public access to the site. We've been thoughtfully criticized for this decision. The matriarch of my family, who is nearly 100 and enrolled in hospice, cautioned (via email!) that "numbers don't tell the whole story." She and others have expressed concern that clinicians and the public may get the impression from eprognosis that a calculator can somehow solve the complexities of prognosis, and skip over the delicate work of prognosis communication. See also this thoughtful post from Carol Levine, who wrote:

The primary reason that patients are referred to hospice so late is not that doctors don’t know the patient is dying but that they are reluctant to discuss the option. For now, my suggestion is that ePrognosis is best used with a warning: “Do not try this at home. If you do and experience severe anxiety or contemplate drastic life changes, consult your physician right away........